Disappear
by dinosaurish
Summary: He was aware, constantly, of the void at his back. / An exploration of how Mikey might've become the person we saw in SAINW.


After the Shredder's attack, the one that cost him his arm and his family, Mikey spent a fitful week in the sewers. He stayed in a little drainage pipe meant to catch and funnel run-off; the tunnel itself was dark, too far from any drains to afford much sunlight, so that all he had for light was the small electric haze that the larger tunnels offered.

For most of it, he was too out of it to care what happened—the Shredder could've walked in and he wouldn't even notice. He was too hot and too cold all at once, slick with sweat, always trembling uncontrollably when he came around. Half the time he didn't even remember he'd lost his arm. In his moments of lucidity, panic swept through him like a forest fire: Where was Leo? Where were Raph and Donnie? Shouldn't Splinter have caught up to them by now? He tried to tend his arm, once, but the steady thrum of pain which was a constant became so sharp at the slightest prodding that it robbed him of all other senses and left him gasping raggedly, too dehydrated to cry but sobbing anyway, dry ugly things that were sure to give away his position.

Casey and April found him, through some miracle, and took care of him. Fixed him up, fed him, gave him an injection and antibiotics for the fever. Mikey didn't remember much about those first few months: April sewing a new mask with him; lying in their bed and listening to the rain pattering on the roof; sitting by the window and watching the streetlights turn on at dusk while he waited for what he saw as the inevitable return of his brothers. As time passed, he remembered even less about that first week, until all that was left was a vague sense of unease and pain and the fear that lanced him when he looked at the circle of dim light that was the tunnel entrance.

April and Casey never pressed, though sometimes they exchanged glances that suggested long conversations behind closed doors. When Mikey asked to have doors or windows shut, they didn't question it.

He woke in cold sweats, some nights, words on the tip of his tongue that he never had time to say, memories at the tip of his mind that always slipped away when he grasped at them. Snapshots, things like Raph drenched in blood and Leo standing chest-deep in a grave, things too unreal to be fake. Things that really didn't matter, in the big picture, not when the Shredder was moving so fast, gathering so much ground.

x

Fighting alone, or even with Casey or April or Angel, was so different from fighting with his brothers that it was almost nothing like fighting at all. There were no filters. All of it bore into Mikey like a drill: Each strike, each battle, whether won or lost, vibrated through his whole being. The responsibility thrust onto him in those moments was too much to bear. How did Raph and Leo stand it? It wasn't like he had never fought alone, or that he couldn't—even with one arm, he could handle himself. He was just so exposed, with nothing and no one to fall back on. There were times that Mikey was seized with paranoia mid-fight and looked to the rooftops, again and again, terrified that some hulking shadow would appear in his blind spots. He was aware, constantly, of the void at his back.

As the Shredder's armies grew and so too the resistance, others began to take the post at his back—but it was never quite the same. He could never shake that black isolation, the sense that something was not right and never would be again.

x

The escalation was gradual, in strange bursts and lulls—one day, Mikey was in a cramped alleyway fighting a sprawl of Foot, the next he was staring down a tank. He wasn't unfamiliar with warfare, with explosions so close they rattled his teeth and gunfire and weapons that shook the whole earth. What he wasn't prepared for was everything else. His brothers had had some close shaves, but seeing a buddy's skull cave in, seeing people twisted and crushed, seeing a fine red mist and knowing it was over, just like that—it was enough to drive anyone crazy.

Things weren't all bad, though. He found that, once the whole mutant thing was out in the public eye, most people were willing to give him a chance, so long as they hadn't had a nasty encounter with one of the Shredder's mutants. There were still movies and TV shows, good food, comic books, and, as each of those commodities faded into history, there were still stories to tell and rations to share. But the war was inescapable. The Shredder was everywhere, in every subway station and alleyway, his cameras mounted every other block. It was more about enjoying life in spite of him—laughter became an act of defiance; splitting a chalky candy bar with a friend was insurrection.

Wide-open tunnels—a champagne bottle popping—semis on overpasses—all just an inconvenience, a little rattle, a little excitement never hurt anybody.

His dreams became muddled—Sensei with his torn robes hunkered down in a pile of rubble, the butt of a REC7 nestled against his furry cheek; Donnie bending down to help Leo pick up Splinter's body as the too-wide grave waited with its grim open mouth; the pale electric circle of light and pain like a steady beat with his buddy Otto against his back, breath clogged like it was when he died.

The dreams never stayed with him long, leaving behind faded photographs. When he woke from them, he shuddered in the dark, sometimes too afraid to open his eyes because he might spot the pale white circle of the moon.

x

People disappeared all the time. Maybe shipped off to labor camps, maybe locked away in a research facility, maybe packed up and moved out to some nowhere-ville in Canada that promised a quiet life. Probably killed. Mikey preferred it when they died where he could see it, when their lifeless hands could be held, when their bones could char black and he knew they were really gone.

When the Shredder held public executions, this sentiment made Mikey feel as monstrous as his body led others to believe. But there: The frightened soldier Mikey fought alongside was hung, his feet kicking uselessly in the air; there, a woman with her head high, who he had never met personally but who helped run supplies in from Maryland, her hair snapping like a banner in the wind. It was all so definite. Mikey wouldn't ask for anything else.

If Mikey could have something so certain, he would take it, gladly. He caught glimpses of Leo and Raph, sometimes worked on the same missions, but they might as well have been strangers drifting in the Atlantic who've happened to cross paths from afar, exchanging nothing more substantial than signal flares. And of course there was Donnie, there one day and gone the next, no note, no clues, no body, no tombstone.

It was one of the few things Mikey thought about constantly—disappearing. The gray space between death, the not-knowing, being reduced to memories that might flicker out like a candle. He worried about forgetting Donnie on his good days; on his bad days, he tried to, hating his brother with every fiber of his being because it was safer than hating Raph and Leo, who perhaps deserved it more. Every open space, open door, open tunnel, held the potential of the grander wasteland of not-death, the impersonal vacancy that disappearing entailed.

x

When Casey died, so too did Mikey's hope. There was, as far as he could see, no recovering from it. Raph disappeared, a whirlwind of pain; Leo, bitter and cracked by their defeat, skirted further and further from the rebel force. April, overcome with grief, had days where she could hardly move. The whole of the world seemed to stand at attention, hushed, holding its breath. Even the Shredder's forces went quiet, toiling away at evils unseen.

Mikey did his best to survive: Sleeping erratically, watching every door and window, head low, eyes bright. He felt like a coiled spring that had rusted, all of the tension and none of the momentum, trapped on all sides. He carried a gun everywhere he went, pricked to attention at the frantic scurrying of mice—and he survived, aware as he did that it didn't account for much.

x

Independence Day was the world letting out its breath and finding out it was in an undertow: Twenty-seven strikes, over two billion dead, power-lines down, riots, utter chaos. For weeks the world was deranged with fear. When the Shredder, with his loyal men, turned the power back on, when the Shredder sent out medical supplies and water and food and grave-diggers, when the Shredder promised safe zones and work and shelters, it was like he was offering to haul the world out from the sea. What could anyone do but welcome him with exhausted gratitude?

Mikey dreamt of all those people disappearing in a flash of light, like something out of some old-timey, grainy religious movie, nothing left behind but their shadows, and woke up too strung-out to do anything but wait it out.

x

She happened nine years before Donnie came back.

It was nothing special—Mikey had found a caravan and agreed to join and protect them in exchange for some food and water while he travelled back to the NYC rebel base. The caravan had come under fire, courtesy of a local gang that wanted their supplies. Gunfire cracked the air; bits of rubble burst into clouds of dust. No grenades, no bombs, no problem.

Mikey was wired; the position was shit, the caravan's supplies were shit, and this was the gang's home turf. There was a gaping alleyway fifteen yards from their impromptu barricade which hadn't had anything or anyone come from it yet, but it was only a matter of time. Mikey kept glancing at it, drawn to it, loathing that strategic weakness with every fiber of his being. If they could just scare the gang away—if they could just get the hell out of there—it would be fine.

Mikey's gun clicked, empty. With a curse under his breath, he balanced the gun between his legs and started to reload, keeping his head down. Someone along the line screamed—Mikey's head snapped up, but he couldn't see them. The scream went on, and on, and on, until Mikey half-wanted to put the guy out of his misery. He clicked the magazine into place, huffed out his relief, and swung back around. The short bursts of the gunfire rattled his plastron, almost soothing, reminiscent of some childhood memory that never quite reached him.

Then: Just like he expected, a flurry of movement from the alleyway, and Mikey jerked around, sprayed the movement with bullets.

A dog ran past their barricade, tail between its legs, but Mikey never saw it.

A girl. There was a girl standing in the middle of no-man's land. There was something wrong with her—her posture was unnatural, suspended. There were red flowers on her shirt.

No—that wasn't right. The girl crumpled.

Something dropped inside of Mikey—like stones down an elevator, dropping out of sight. Mikey stood.

The girl was filthy and her eyes half-open. Thick black hair, in messy waves. Her small hand rested on the ground, twisted. She was warm, and very still, and the whole world fell silent to listen to her.

Everything was dark, inside; he couldn't focus. This wasn't right. She was too young to be here, in the middle of all this, too young to exist in this world at all. The flowers on her shirt were unfurling, blooming into long, streaming petals. Mikey bent over her and tried to brush her hair away, but he already had her in his arm and he would have to let her go. She wasn't real. She couldn't be.

Then: Hands on him, voices in his ear. A shirt with bright red flowers. Black nothingness within, like the void at his back, something beyond pain, beyond terror. Waves that went on, and on, and on. Hands pulling him away from her tiny body.

Mikey found himself in a black tunnel, knee-deep in water, drenched in blood.

He found himself on his knees, found something inside of himself that did not belong to him.

x

When Mikey returned to the surface, he returned with the void in his heart.


End file.
